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Would You Hire a Babysitter Online?

Have you heard of SitterCity.com? It’s basically a dating site for babysitters (and petsitters and housesitters, too). Qualified babysitters around the country create profiles on the site, so when you’re looking for a sitter you can sift through the site’s listings for a caregiver that meets your needs. Their profiles include things like whether or not they have CPR certification and their cooking skills. They also list references and you can view the results of a background check on each candidate.

It seems pretty cool, right? Any mom knows how stressful it is to find a quality caregiver, so it’s great that there are so many to choose from in one place. But I’m wondering, would you use SitterCity.com? As a mom, I’ve always relied heavily on word-of-mouth recommendations, so the idea of leaving my daughter with someone I found online is pretty new to me. The good thing is, once you have a few top candidates you can set up one-on-one interviews.

Share your thoughts on hiring a babysitter online in the comments. And if you’ve ever used SitterCity.com, share your experience.

I haven’t used SitterCity, but we used a similar service in London called http://www.sitters.co.uk and had an excellent experience. The sitters were all vetted, and they all had previous/current experience with children, ranging from pediatric nurses to professional nannies to preschool teachers, etc. Each girl we had was wonderful, but they do allow you to provide feedback on the site and rank your favorites, as well as block sitters you do not want to have again. They will always try to get you on of your top three, which was so great b/c our daughter became familiar with our regular gals. Curious to see if SitterCity works the same way, we will definitely be checking it out.

I am currently using nannyshare.co.uk that has a good online community of available babysiiters along with their qualified babysitting profiles and portfolios.Due to the growing demand of nanny sharing all over uk,I have personally signup through them as I found their services quite reliable and support friendly.